


Vivat Regina

by lanyon



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone tells her side of the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vivat Regina

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



**i.**

She liked to dress me in pink, my mother did. Pink and ribbons and ruffles. She told me that I would be a goddess of spring before I'd cut my first tooth. I told her I wanted to choose. She said no goddess chooses. We are or we are not. 

The gods chose, I told her. My father chose not to be an amuse-bouche and now he is the god of the skies. My uncles chose their realms, of sea and of the deep, dark places (the further from Zeus the better, perhaps).

(By the by, I preferred blue; the skies of Zeus, yes, and the seas of Poseidon and the deep inky blackness of Hades.)

**ii.**

Flowers are wearisome when they spring from every footfall. Hermes joked that I sneezed petals. Apollo was far cruder. The gods do not learn fast; the bodily functions of goddesses are not theirs to control. My husband learned it though. He learned it when I laughed at Leuce’s fate. 

(A note: I do not love all growing things.

**Example 1:**  
I was not my husband’s first. Leuce was, by all accounts, a pretty nymph, slender and pale with too-big eyes and a pink-lipped smile. My Judges, my dog, my ferryman, my rivers; they understate her allure to make me feel better. I am secure in my beauty. 

I am taken to her; this nymph, now a tree (and do they ever learn?) and I examine her from every angle. She has the sharp white bark of any poplar. I put my hand on her side. My complexion is far superior. There is no wind by the banks of Acheron but her leaves rustle. Once I hear the sound of coquettish whispers, I cannot unhear it. They set my teeth on edge. She might learn to love me, as all plants and trees and green growing things seem to do. 

I whisper thank you to her, for having the grace to be almost dead, perhaps before I was even born, before I ran around in ringlets and bows and pink. A flick of my wrist is enough to communicate my meaning to Acheron. He breaks his bank and floods her roots. 

I do not look back as I walk away.

**Example 2:**  
I was not my husband’s last. I do not know if it is sibling rivalry. Perhaps I am a pale-limbed doll caught in a tug-of-war between a brother and a sister or perhaps Hades simply hates his mother-in-law. It is a stereotype but we are Greek and we are deities. I do not know his reasons for straying, after I make my barefoot way back to the world above, where winter inhales and spring exhales and the daffodil buds turn to greet my arrival. What it is to be so adored! Why did my husband not love me like flowers do, or Cerberus, with his lolling heads, or even my father (whose manner of loving is dubious, at best)?

Hades promises that he misses me, when it is summer, and there are beaches and pina coladas and hot sand between my toes. He misses me so much on this occasion that he seeks comfort. Another nymph, insubstantial as the rest, with fiery red hair and a wicked smile. She is not pure, like Leuce, but any child born of my darling, dashing, devilish Cocytus could never be pure. 

She paints her lips red. My husband never was any good at cleaning behind his ears, or the collars of his shirts. He does not defend himself. He has some shame, I suppose. His nymph does not last long. She underestimates me. She overestimates my husband. He will not protect her. I turn her to mint; I watch as she wizens down into a handful of corrugated leaves, pushing up through the dirt of my kingdom. I stroke the edge of a leaf and then I grind her to a pulp. She is fragrant in death.

My husband avoids me for a week. He has some shame, indeed.

**Example 3:**  
Pomegranate seeds stick in my teeth and in my gullet. I despise them, each one of them. Six seeds and they are a symbol of my indentured servitude to the Underworld. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

When I was little, and hiding under the bedclothes and exchanging ghost stories with maids and other godlings, my favourite was the horror of the unwitting soul who eats her fill in the Underworld, never to leave again. 

I _knew_ the laws and this universe is full of silly laws. 

_Don’t pull a face_ , my mother said, _or Zephyrus will make sure that your face gets stuck like that._ I thought of Hyacinthus and wondered if she had a choice.

_You can’t run away to sea_ , my mother said, fondly. _It’s fierce bad luck to be a woman at sea_. 

Tell that to Thetis, I wanted to say, or to Amphitrite. 

_Don’t eat in the Underworld_ , my mother said. _Or you will remain there for ever._

And so these six seeds are my marriage vows. Fully sanely consensually mine. This is not Stockholm Syndrome or trickery by my husband (he is not an imaginative man). This is my choice. 

**Example 4:**  
Myrrh - well. A story for another time. (My husband is not my last.)

Maybe Aphrodite will tell it better.)

**iii.**

I walk down Tenth Avenue. I do not step on the cracks because the Underworld is too, too close. It smells like snow. I step into a bar and the bartender is drunk. This is Perdition and the cocktail is a Persephone. How can I refuse? This is my choice.

**iv.**

The ground opens up and swallows me whole. There is foreshadowing. There is no foreshadowing. There is a whisper that the King of the Underworld seeks a bride. There is a rumour that he is lonely. My mother laughs unkindly. 

_He is not attractive_ , she says, simply. I have seen Hades on Olympus, perhaps twice. He is tall, dark and brooding. He is everything that I am not. They say that nothing grows in his domain, aside from his wealth and his foul temper. 

He does not smile. I can see that there are lines on his brow. The weight of the world above him, perhaps. The weight of having such brothers as his. Does Hades tire of the mortals that pass through, who have dallied with Zeus, or insulted Poseidon? Does he even care? His hair is a shock of black and he wears such drab colours. He is everything that I am not. I am pleased by this. 

The ground opens up and swallows me whole. Helios sees and as I am dragged under, I press my finger to my lips. Keep my secret, I implore him. For a time, at least. 

It is my turn to be an adventurer, like Hermes. A trickster, perhaps. It is my turn to be entirely unpredictable. 

Hades expects me to be downcast, or to rend at my hair. Sackcloth and ashes and shorn hair are not flattering and I tell him so. I ease off my sandals. I am allowed to be barefoot here. This is my realm.

He looks at me, askance. 

_You stole me_ , I say. I point to the roof, though it is so far above that it might as well be sky. He has ripped me through strata of earth, through ground soil and bedrock and seams of glittering ore. _You stole me for a reason._

He narrows his eyes. His lips part. _I need a wife_. I have never heard him speak before. I am entranced. (Did you think this was anything other than a love story?)

_You need a queen, Uncle_ , I say, quite cruelly. _And I am she._

He has nothing to say to that. I reach for his hand. _Show me_ , I say.

_Show-?_ His brow is furrowed and that will not do. I reach up and smooth away the deep creases, the crevices of time and concerns. 

_Show me my realm_ , I say. (He is not slow, my husband; he is the quickest-witted of any god I know, though no man can compete with my goddess-sisters and goddess-aunts as they tend their flames and blades.)

He takes my hand, after a pause. _Perhaps I aimed too high, Kore_ , he says. He continues to look perplexed.

We are of a height. It pleases me. _Perhaps I stooped too low, Hades_ , I say. There is such a thing as compromise. There is such a thing as love at first sight. (Though this is third sight, perhaps, or fourth and the light is flattering.)

**v.**

His skin is smooth and cool. I raise welts with my nails on his back and he laughs, low and breathless. His lips fit to mine perfectly. Above our heads, worlds and worlds above, there is winter and there is death but I am happy. I have chosen. 

**vi.**

(To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun.)

To this, there is winter. My mother’s wrath. I am cosy below. She has not grown better with age. She sits at the bar, legs crossed and manicured nails tap-tapping on the bartop. 

Demeter is seldom what people expect. They expect an absent-minded earth mother, who wears floaty skirts and flowers in her hair. She so loves it when she is underestimated. My mother wears short skirts and knee-high boots and fishnet stockings and she is terrifying and she is beautiful, as any goddess of the spring should be. She makes no apologies. She is nature and nature can be cruel and her nature is. 

(The apple, as they say, has not fallen far from the tree.)

**vii.**

I have half-siblings, of course. Dozens of them (quite possibly hundreds). The mortals pass through my halls and I am no more enamoured of them than my husband is. My Judges enjoy them, though. 

I have children, ill-begotten but greatly loved. There is Zagreus, child of my father, and there is Melinoe (fool me twice, Zeus) and there is Makaria, my husband’s daughter. Nothing grows in the Underworld, aside from asphodel and wayward nymphs and my beautiful children. 

Hades first eyes my swollen belly with alarm, and then concern, and then pride. Makaria is born in the above-world, with my mother and my sister, Artemis, in attendance. Her appearance shocks them. Her paternity is beyond question. Her father adores her, as he loves my other children.

**viii.**

Does it surprise you to learn that Hades has a heart? It is sharp and piercing, as his mind is sharp and piercing, as his eyes are sharp and piercing. My husband is all corners and awkwardness and he will not speak a dozen words if one will suffice (and that one word is, invariably, _Persephone_ ). 

He shields his eyes against the glare of Times Square. He comes to meet me now, when the sun rises over the East River and my mother walks away, with winter in her thrall. We descend lower than the lowest subways, beyond rats and advisories and commuters. 

He takes my hand and waits as I unzip my boots and he pretends not to smile when my toes curl into the damp earth by the banks of the Styx. 

(Long live the Queen.)

**Author's Note:**

> * Thank you so very much to my giftee, Brenda. I hope you enjoy this. I loved writing this. Honestly, the prompt might have been made for me. Happy Yuletide to you.  
> 
> * Thanks, too, to my band of merry enablers, who kept me on the straight and narrow and who cheerleaded when I needed it.  
> 
> * Incidentally, Perdition is a bar in Hell's Kitchen that has a mean cocktail list and I can thoroughly recommend the Persephone.


End file.
